Debate about how to bailout Greece among European central bankers and finance ministers already seems endless, but the friendly fire from Iceland’s ash-spitting volcano could protract things further.

Northern Europe was declared a no-fly zone just after a flurry of VIPs including European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and EU Economic and Monetary Affairs commissioner Olli Rehn arrived in Spain’s capital Madrid to discuss the terms of aid to their most troublesome member state.

With airports in Frankfurt and Brussels shut down, Trichet and Rehn and many of their colleagues from the 27 member states may have plenty of time to discuss Europe’s future financial set-up in detail.

While euro skeptics say that should have been done in the late 1990s, talk in the lobby of Madrid’s swanky InterContinental Hotel Friday morning, where many of the VIPs stay, was mainly about how they’d get back home.